hugolp
Member
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2009
- Messages
- 5,207
Why were they detained?
Pissing the overlords.
Why were they detained?
a better question- wtf is the "financial police"?
The Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) marshals the department's intelligence and enforcement functions with the twin aims of safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats.
Treasury bonds
These securities have the longest maturity of any bond issued by the U.S. Treasury, from 10 to 30 years. The 30-year bond is also called the "long bond." Denominations range from $1000 to $1 million. T-bonds pay interest every 6 months at a fixed coupon rate. As mentioned above, these bonds are not callable, but some older T-bonds available on the secondary market are callable within five years of the maturity date.
According to news.gov.hk: Four Taiwanese have been charged for possessing forged US Treasury Bonds with a face value of US$250 billion. Police received a report early this month form a 79-year-old man who was asked by one of the Taiwanese to help realise two boxes of US Treasury Bonds with a face value of US$500 million each. Officers arranged a controlled buy meeting with the Taiwanese in a Jordan guesthouse on August 11. ...
Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research
Why were they detained?
Very interesting that the Italians are attempting to stop the sale of treasuries. What do we have over them?
Thank you. I too, am not clear what they were doing wrong. Can't they sell their shit?
I bet the bonds end up in Pope Benedict's mattress.
JERUSALEM – An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress she said had almost $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites on Wednesday. The woman told The Associated Press that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise present on Monday — and threw out the old one.
The next day, she said, she remembered that she had hidden her life savings inside the old mattress. "I woke up in the morning screaming, when it hit me what happened," said the Tel Aviv woman, who asked not to be identified.
She went to look for the mattress, but it had already been hauled away by garbage collectors, she said. Searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing.
06/08/2009
Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland.
3-30-09
WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department said it has about $134.5 billion left in its financial-rescue fund, giving the Obama administration a cushion as it implements expensive programs aimed at unlocking credit markets and boosting ailing industries.
OK so what are odds? Seriously...what are the odds of this shit being a coincidence? All the TARP money is being paid back. Was someone trying to make off with the left overs for a quiet deposit into a Swiss bank account? Or maybe hand them over to a foreign central bank to use to keep buying new Treasuries?
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A
Quote:
06/08/2009
Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123828522318566241.html
Quote:
3-30-09
WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department said it has about $134.5 billion left in its financial-rescue fund, giving the Obama administration a cushion as it implements expensive programs aimed at unlocking credit markets and boosting ailing industries.
EDIT: Hmm, this gets more interesting the more I look into it. Very soon after this went down, Japan released a statement that its trust in US Treasuries is "unshakable".
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aMqRFNo4uSgY
Now the timing of that report is interesting because it means one of two scenarios, neither of which are good. Either these Japanese smugglers were trying to dump 20% of Japan's USD holdings under the table and the "unshakable" report is meant to try to save face after getting busted OR Japan didn't get the memo about the seizure in time to spike the statement. In the latter instance, it's really easy to have "unshakable" trust when the Fed/Treasury is quietly handing you TARP (US taxpayer) money to use to buy new Treasuries, therefore not risking your own money, and keeping the illusion that the game is still going strong. Also notice that Yosano's statement was released prior to a summit of G8 finance ministers being held in ITALY.